To have a beautiful garden take time but it don’t get beautiful over night – it do take time,patience & a lot of care!

 

 

Summer is progressing

 This is often one of the hottest months of the year and a great time to sit out and enjoy your garden. Keep plants looking good by regularly dead-heading, and you’ll enjoy a longer display of blooms. Make sure you keep new plants well watered and hoe off weeds, which thrive in the sunshine.

Top 10 things to do this month

Check clematis for signs of clematis wilt

 Place conservatory plants outside now that it is warm

Water tubs and new plants if dry, but be water-wise

Deadhead bedding plants and repeat-flowering perennials, to ensure continuous flowering

Pick courgettes before they become marrows

Treat apple scab

Clear algae, blanket weeds and debris from ponds, and keep them topped up

Order catalogues for next year’s spring-flowering bulbs

Give the lawn a quick-acting summer feed, especially if a spring feed was not done

Give woodwork a lick of paint or preserver, while the weather is dry

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RHS advice on what to water, what to leave

The Royal Horticultural Society is warning gardeners that soil dryness levels have already fallen to a low often not encountered until late July/August. The recent low rainfall has led to soils having a moisture deficit of four inches, meaning that four inches of rain would be needed to restore the soil to full moisture capacity.

“It would have to be unusually rainy now to fully replenish the soil so vulnerable plants may need supplementary watering,” says Guy Barter RHS Chief Horticultural Adviser. “Most established trees, shrubs and climbers should have sufficient roots to withstand this level of dryness by using water stored in the soil from winter rain, but as summer rain is seldom sufficient for newly planted trees and shrubs I would suggest that ones planted in the last two years will need watering every 10 days even if there is some rain now.”

The RHS advises that early flowering perennials that have finished flowering can be left to die back. Late flowering perennials will need watering unless the soil is particularly heavy and moist. Raspberries, strawberries and other fruits are likely to respond to some watering. Lawns can be kept green by frequent watering but it is questionable if this is a sensible use of water, when brown lawns will quickly green up when the rain returns.

“If at all possible it would be useful to group containers, especially the very vulnerable hanging baskets, in light shade which will help reduce drying out,” says Guy.

The RHS suggests that watering the soil is best practice rather than watering plants and to do this consider making ‘ponds’ round individual plants so that the water can really soak in, ideally wetting the soil quite deeply, say to 25cm (10ins). Thorough watering like this supports plants for 14 days, but merely wetting the surface wastes water, encourages weeds and can lead to surface rooting making the plant more vulnerable.

Getting the soil right is also important. Guy explains: “Having your own compost heap will not only help reduce the amount of waste going to landfill but also will give gardeners an ideal medium to help make their soils even better for plants,” says Guy.

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Bindweed

Bindweed is very hard to control and the best way to deal with it is to dig it out of the soil and just keep digging it out every time it come back, dig over your soil and cultivate it with a cultivator, – by doing that you are weakling the root of the bindweed and over time it will stop coming back but please do not put it onto the computes heap/bin because that is how it spent. If you can get some manure from a farmer and add that to your soil – that would improve the quality of the soil.

 

 

 

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